The Esri 2010 International User Conference opening session included several demonstrations highlighting ArcGIS Online content and capabilities. Here’s a review of what was presented.
ArcGIS Online Basemap Tour
The World Topographic Basemap is one of several Esri basemaps. It’s a cartographically designed, multi-resolution basemap that offers worldwide coverage.
The World Topographic Basemap is also a true GIS community map, and it includes contributions from a variety of users, including Natural Resource Canada, the USGS and EPA, and many state and local governments. Shown were examples from Arkansas and Denver County, Colorado.
The basemap also includes content from cities throughout the world, including San Francisco, Boston, Hong Kong, and Toronto. Though coming from various sources and many different scales, the basemap has been compiled seamlessly using the world topographic basemap template, available online.
Below is a portion of the basemap with data contributed by the city of Boston.
And here is a section of the Topographic Basemap with data contributed by the city of Toronto. Those contour lines shown are at 1m intervals.
The World Imagery Basemap is another ArcGIS Online basemap, offering 15m minimum resolution across the globe, and having high resolution content for many cities and countries. For many thousands of cities and towns outside the US, the basemap is 1m resolution or better. Shown below is recently added imagery for Brussels.
In the US the basemap offers 1m minimum resolution, and that’s been accomplished by compiling federal, state, and local content together with commercial data. All of this is free for users. Here is the area near the San Diego Convention Center.
The World Streets Basemap is a another multi-resolution basemap offering detailed streets and also building footprints for major cities at small scales.
ArcGIS Online also offers many layers, many of which can be used as building blocks for your own basemaps, such as the World Terrain Base and World Reference layers. Also included are many thematic layers, including demographics, geology, and more. This is a portion of the Geologic Map of North America.
The goal of ArcGIS Online is to provide users with choices from among the best available sources. Also included are the Bing Maps for Enterprise Roads, Aerial, and Hybrid basemaps. OpenStreetMap is yet another basemap that users can choose from.
ArcGIS Online basemaps are a great way to build your own maps, and are also a great place for users to share their data with the GIS community.
